1st Edition

The Routledge Handbook of Rhetoric and Power

Edited By Nathan Crick Copyright 2025
482 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

482 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

482 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This handbook represents the first comprehensive disciplinary investigation into the relationship between rhetoric and power as it is expressed in different aspects of society. Providing conceptual and empirical foundations for the study of the relationship between different forms of rhetorical expression and diverse structures, practices, habits, and networks of power, The Routledge Handbook... Read more

1 Prolegomena to Future Inquiry into Rhetoric and Power 

Nathan Crick 

Part 1. Theoretical Foundations 

2 Infraontology: Rhetoric, Insurgency, Abolition 

Omedi Ochieng 

3 Economic New Materialism and the Invention of Affective Possibilities 

Catherine Chaput 

4 Political Style, Formalism, and the Anthropocene 

Robert Hariman 

5 Abolitionist John Brown, Gun Clubs, and the Rhetoric of Physical Violence 

Jay P. Childers 

6 The Universe of Things: Power in a More than Human World 

Kevin Michael DeLuca and Joshua Trey Barnett 

7 The Rhetorical Analysis of Unconscious Forms of Persuasion 

Michael Lane Bruner 

Part 2. Propaganda, Politics, and the State 

8 Culturally Sensitive Engagement: Enabling Citizen Deliberation in Transportation Needs 

Rebecca M. Townsend and Mary Rosado 

9 Rhetorical Criticism as the Art of Questioning What We Take for Granted: An Inquiry into the “American Dream” 

Jeremy Engels, Tiara Good, John Minbiole, William Saas and Frank Stec 

10 Moralizing an Electoral Crisis:  The Rhetoric of Moral Words in Ghana’s 2020 Election Dispute 

Nancy Henaku 

11 “This is Not Who We are as a Nation”: Theorizing Collective Identity in the US 

Mary E. Stuckey 

12 A Hestian Defense of the Oikos: The Authoritarian Mother Persona of Sarah Huckabee Sanders 

Valerie Palmer-Mehta 

Part 3. Resistance and Social Movements 

13 Soup, Glue, and Art: Iconoclasm from Below in Just Stop Oil’s Use of Image Events 

James Collins and Roberta Chevrette 

14 The Power of Mutual Aid and Care 

Amy Pason 

15 “How Can We Use This to Create Power?”: Revisiting the Rhetoric of Consciousness-Raising for Intersectional Solidarity 

Dana L. Cloud 

16 Meredith and the Monument: The Ecology of Memory at the University of Mississippi 

Dave Tell 

17 Body Rhetoric: Containing the Filthy Body of Irish Republicanism in Long Kesh Prison 

Kate Siegfried 

Part 4. Culture, Society, and Identity 

18 Apocalyptic Rhetoric and Settler Power: Lessons for the End Times in Eruption 

Santhosh Chandrashekar and Christina R. Foust 

19 In Search of a Verb: An Affective Rhetorical Criticism of “The Hill We Climb” 

Lee M. Pierce 

20 Prophets, Presidents, and Democracy 

Theon Edward Hill 

21 The Bamboozle of the Funny: Conservative Comedic Counterfeit Resilience 

Liz Sills 

22 “Birmingham is Really on Mars”: White Innocence and A Good Conscience 

Raquel M. Robvais 

23 Collective Rewor(l)ding in the Wreckage of Hauntings and Haunting Situations 

Romeo Garcia, Jenna Zan, Muath Qadous, Mitzi Ceballos, Keith L. McDonald and Sabit Bastakotia 

Part 5. Discourses of Technique and Organization 

24 AI Chatbots, Translative Rhetoric, and the Future of Public Discourse 

G. Mitchell Reyes 

25 Out of Time:  The Spectacular Temporalities of Border Crisis 

Lisa A. Flores and Mikayla Torres 

26 Drawing the Line: Independent Commissions as Deliberative Spaces for Citizen Driven Redistricting 

Ron VonBurg and Marcus Paroske 

27 Conflict Narratives of Competitive Victimhood: On the Storied Dis/Organization of Collective Action 

Anna Wiederhold Wolfe 

28 Material Forces in the Brain Sciences: A Neuro-Ontological Compliment to Neurorhetorics 

David Gruber 

Part 6. Prospects for the Future 

29 Soy Porque Somos: Touring and Planting Trees as Convivial Rhetoric on a Precarious Planet 

Kundai Chirindo and Phaedra C. Pezzullo 

30 Chastened Humanism and Metabolic Transcendence 

Ira Allen 

31 Apocalypsis, Truth, and Cultural Anxiety 

E. Johanna Hartelius 

32 From Black Twitter to Musk’s X: A Case Study in Rhetoric, Media, Culture, and Power 

Alisa Hardy, Matthew Salzano and Damien Smith Pfister 

33 Rhetorical Powermapping: Converging Solidarities for Translocal Ecological Justice 

Constance Gordon 

34 On the Solidarity of Species: Cybernetics, Biopolitics, and the Future of Human Unity 

Jeff Pruchnic

Biography

Nathan Crick is Professor in the Department of Communication at Texas A&M University, USA. His recent books include Rhetorical Public Speaking, 4th edition (Routledge, 2022) and The Rhetoric of Social Movements (Routledge, 2020).